Rose and Grandad
by GabeMart6
Summary: What if the War Doctor did not regenerate of old age at the end of Day of the Doctor? What if Rose's first adventures in time were with him? How are relationships different this time around? Can Rose heal a Doctor closer to the Time War? Can the War Doctor be the father figure Rose always wanted in her life? Read and all that jazz to find out.
1. Rose and Grandad I

Rose and Grandad

_Peter Tyler - Pete to his family and friends was born the 15th of September, 1984 to parents Harold 'Harry' Tyler and Rosa Tyler. A family that had made its wealth off of real estate during the Industrial Revolution, the young Pete had want of nothing. Until 1968, when Harry, perhaps wanting for a Tyler return to prominence, squandered away virtually all of the family wealth and properties on failed investment schemes. At 13 Pete left school and began to work every odd job he could find, driven to return his family back to a respectable status in the world. In 1974, after years of failed attempts, his mother was diagnosed with cancer. The Tyler heir pursued a career in inventing, hoping to create the next big thing and get Rosa the help she needed. Unfortunately, she died within the same. Pete, devastated, left his father and London behind, but continued his entrepreneurial inventorships. Friends he met around this time would often say he was an ambitious if scatterbrained, entrepreneur. It was 11 years later that Tyler, now the last of his family, found happiness. In 1985 Pete married his girlfriend of three years, Jacqueline Prentice and had a baby daughter later the next year. Pete Tyler is survived by his wife and his daughter, Rose Tyler, whom the late Tyler named after his mother._

224\. That was the number of words that made up all of the tangible information that Rose Tyler had on her late father. She had a love/hate relationship with those words. On one hand, she was grateful for that eulogy; it composed a picture of her father that she would not have otherwise. On the other hand, she hated its existence. That and the fact that her mother gave it to her on the first day of primary school. Why would any daughter want the first impression of her dad to also be the last? Why did she have to carry on the grief of a man she would never have known personally?

'I would have demanded to know about him eventually' Rose reminded herself. She always did; no matter how much she wished she didn't love a man whom she could never meet, Rose knew that she would have demanded information on him if she hadn't been given it so early.

One thing Rose found out she had in common with her dad was a sense of ambition. Not ambition in the traditional sense mind you, being the CEO of a Fortune 500 company wasn't her style. No, this young woman wanted to grab the world by its horns, go on adventures, be the change that her father was never allowed to be. Unfortunately though…

"Oi! Rose!"

She was startled and looked up. It was Gus, the security guard. His arm was stretched out towards her, his hand holding out a bag full of money used for lottery ticket purchases for the day.

'Of course.' Rose rolled her eyes while taking it, walking back into the store that she worked in. That's right, the young woman who dreamed of adventure worked at Henrik's Department Store. So much for dreaming big. Making her way downstairs to give Wilson, the chief electrician, the lottery money she regretted for the hundredth time taking the job at Henrik's. Her mother and her needed the money though, and this was all that she could find in a pinch.

The nineteen-year-old was downstairs and she noticed that it was much darker than usual in the basement. Also, Wilson was nowhere in site. 'Strange' she thought, 'he's usually right here waiting for me.'

"Wilson!" She called. "Hello, Wilson? It's Rose. I've got the lottery money!"

She waited a few seconds. There was no response. She tried again.

"I can't hang about 'cos they're closing the shop. Wilson! Oh, come on!"

Rose turned to leave when she heared a clatter down the hallway. Concerned, she started slowly down the hallway towards its origin. She came upon red double doors. 'Wilson's office. Maybe.' She opens the door.

It was not Wilson's office but a storeroom. Weirdly, the lights were already on, but there was no human inside aside from some human-looking plastic mannequins. Still, she called out for him, hoping he was about. "Wilson! Wilson!"

This was apparently a mistake; the double doors shut behind her in a loud SLAM. Panicking, she ran to them, trying to pry them open but they were not budging. "You're kidding me" she gasped, finally accepting that they would not budge. 'What the hell is going on?'

She hears another clatter behind her. Whipping around she again saw no one...save for the plastic mannequins. "Is there someone mucking about? Who is it?" That finally got a reaction. The store dummy nearest her slowly creaked its head in her direction.

'Wow...really outdid yourself, Derek' she thought both scared and annoyed. He had always been a practical joker but this was taking it too damn far. "Yeah, you got me. Very funny."

But Derek didn't reveal himself. Nor Wilson, nor anyone. In fact, two other dummies creaked their heads toward her and began staggering towards her. 'What the actual hell?'

"Right, I've got the joke. Who's idea was this? Is it Derek's? Is it? Derek, is this you?" There was again, no response. The dummies then started towards her, awkwardly scuffing the floor with the rubber contact. Rose was petrified with fear. What could she do? The door was locked and in every direction, strange men in dummy outfits that could probably mess her up real bad. She was backed up into a corner. 'Is this how it ends?' she asked, back against the wall. Peering up she saw the lead dummy raise its arm. Steeling herself for the blow, she's surprised to feel a hand grab one of hers. A non-plastic one!

Looking to the side she saw an older man who she's never seen before, looking absolutely frail, but with command and experience in his narrow brown eyes that drew her attention away from the dummies and squarely on him.

"Run!"

And so they did.

Rose and the man quickly came upon the double doors. She slowed down despite herself. 'They're locked, there's no way we're getting through.' This did not stop the elderly stranger a bit though. Barely pausing he pulled out a strange cylindrical device, pointed it at the door and opened them. 'Oh shit.'

She quickly caught up to him. She was about to mention a lift they could take when he grasped her hand tightly and took her further down the basement corridor, farther than she had ever been before, to another lift. They entered.

Facing the back, Rose turned around when she heard a metallic clang. The ringleader of the dummies had stuck its arm through the door and her rescuer was wrestling with it. His grunting grew more and more frustrated and it culminated with one of the weirdest things Rose had seen in her life. He dropped one hand into his coat pocket and swiftly pulled out a weapon and fired it squarely at the prankster's face. The prankster fell away but left its arm in the man's grasp. 'Did he just kill a bloke?' The lift started to ascend.

"You...you shot him!" She said in shock

He turned around to face her. "Yes," he responded plainly.

"And pulled his arm off" she continued.

"Mhm. Plastic"

"You killed somebody! Yeah, he scared me half to death and was chasing us but why'd you have to do that huh? He could've been a student!"

The man seemed surprised at her outburst and it also reminded him that he was still holding his gun and the plastic arm. He pocketed the weapon in his bulky mucked up leather jacket and handed the arm to Rose. "Students? Why would they be students?" he asked.

"I don't know."

"Well, you said it. After accusing me of murder. Why students?"

"'Cos to get that many people dressed up and being silly, they got to be students. Like a prank."

"Hmm," he said. "I hadn't thought of that. Makes sense though."

"Thanks." 

"They're not students. And this," he pulled out the weapon again. "was on stun." Rose looked at the gun. It was shiny and larger than any handgun she'd seen (though she hadn't seen many). Maybe he was from the government? A government? Regardless...he had saved her. She decided to let the gun thing go. For now.

"Fine. On stun. Whatever. Whoever they are, when Wilson finds them, he's gonna call the police."

"Who's Wilson?"

"Chief Electrician."

"Wilson's dead," he said.

As the lift opened, the man briskly turned and exited the lift. Rose followed right behind, now seeing that they had been taken to the back of the store.

"That's not funny. That's sick!" she said in disgust. This man was really making it hard to be grateful towards him.

"I never said it was, girl." he turned towards a lift close to the back exit doors and started fiddling with it with the strange tool he had used on the red doors.

"My name is Rose!" she yelled. "Who the hell are you? What's that lot down there?" He continued with his work, ignoring her.

"I said who are they?" she repeated.

He stopped his work, huffing. The man stood up, turned to her and walked outside the exit doors with her.

"Okay, Miss Rose. They're made of plastic. Living plastic creatures. They're being controlled by a relay device in the roof, which would be a nasty big problem if I didn't have this." He pulled out a makeshift bomb that was making soft beeping sounds. "So, I'm going to go up there and blow them up, and I might well die in the process, not like that would matter anymore. I do this for someone lost to me long ago. You go home. Go and have your lovely beans on toast, or whatever people eat this decade. Don't tell anyone about this, because if you do, you'll get them killed. Forget me, forget my face." With this, he ran back inside, shutting the door hard.

The amount of information was overwhelming. Living plastic creatures? Blowing up Henrik's? He's going to die, but not for himself.

"Wait! Hey!"

The door propped open, the man halfway out of it, still holding that bomb. "Yes, what is it? Kind of busy here!"

"You said you're doing this for a someone else? A friend?"

For the first time since she'd known him, he smiled.

"Not a friend. A Doctor. Now go, Rose! Run for your life!"


	2. Rose and Grandad II

Rose and Grandad II

Whatever else Rose did not know about the strange man, she did know that if anyone was serious about blowing up a department store to kill living plastic dummies, it would be he. So she took off at a speed she had not known since her days in gymnastics, still holding the plastic arm that he had given her when in that lift. She had barely made it to the nearest main street when it had happened.

BOOM

The explosion shook the ground. Looking back towards her place of (former) employment, Rose saw white and orange flames engulfing Henrick's. With another loud crash, the second floor partly caved in.

'Oh my God' she thought, 'he couldn't have survived that...could he?' she didn't want to think of it and, frankly, she didn't have the time. Passing an inconspicuous 1960s blue police box, she ran back home with the fastest momentum a semi-out-of-shape 19-year-old's body could carry her. The stairs were probably the hardest bit.

As soon as she entered the door her mother pounced on her with the fiercest of hugs that she only reserved for when she was really worried for or really cross with her. After a good minute of Rose trying to calm her blubbering mother down was when the next person in her apartment made himself known. It was Micky Smith, her boyfriend. They had only been dating a few months but Micky went about their relationship, one would think they'd be do an engagement any day now. She liked that about him at first. The protectiveness, the caring, the constant phone calls and offers to take her anywhere she pleased. He was a far cry from Jimmy Stone, that's for sure. But sometimes, especially now, Rose could've done with extra space.

"I've been phoning your mobile. You could've been dead. It's on the news and everything. I can't believe that your shop went up!" Micky finally released her from his death-grip hug.

"I'm all right, honestly, I'm fine! Don't make a fuss," she said, sitting down on the nearest couch.

"Well, what happened?" he was making a fuss.

"I don't know!" she yelled. And that was the truth. She didn't really understand what was going on, even after that man had tried to explain things. Aliens? 'Ha, likely story.'

"What was it though? What caused it?"

Bugger, he really wasn't going to let this go, was he. "I wasn't in the shop. I was outside. I didn't see anything." She didn't like lying to him but it's not like he would believe what she said if she didn't.

Fortunately and unfortunately, her mum, phone in hand, interrupted their conversation.

"It's Debbie on the end. She knows a man on the Mirror. Five hundred quid for an interview."

"Oh that's brilliant! Give it here." she took the phone and hung up. She was done being the spectacle for the night.

"Well, you've got to find some way of making money. Your job's kaput and I'm not bailing you out." she took the phone, which was ringing again, and answered. It was Bev, one of her mum's oldest, and most gossipy friends. The entire apartment block would probably know Rose had a connection with Henrick's by tomorrow morning. To be honest, Rose was too bloody tired to care.

It took a while but she was finally able to wave off Micky. And get him to throw away the plastic arm that she had brought to her flat as he left. He really was a sweetheart, maybe she's being annoyed at nothing. Affection is good, reliability is good. She took these thoughts with her as she went into her room, swiftly undressed, and fell asleep as quickly as she had in recent memory, exhausted from the ordeal leading up to the explosion.

_Next Morning _

It had been a while since Rose had slept in on a weekday. In fact, she would wager that the last time had been the week before she had gotten hired at Henrick's. But here she was, on a Tuesday, waking up proper at 12:30 pm.

After grabbing a cheap lunch by a foodstand near her block of flats, she returned to her place with the paper in hand to look for employment opportunities. As much as it was nice to wake up after 8 am, her mum was right about her financial situation. If Rose wanted to keep living with her mum, she'd need to find another job. Not to mention that Rose went absolutely batty if she was doing nothing for too long.

She was just arguing with her mum about becoming a butcher's apprentice when she heard a rattle.

'The cat flap' she groaned internally. The blonde got up to check the door.

"Mum, you're such a liar. I told you to nail that cat flap down. We're going to get strays."

"I did it weeks back!"

"No, you thought about it." Rose approached the door and heard another small rattle. Looking down she saw that screws to the cat flap had somehow fallen out. Taken out? She was just about to call to her mum to see what had happened when the flap moved.

Kneeling down at the level of the flap entrance she waited for it again, her body tensed. 'Could the dummy men be back? Do they know I survived? What's going on?' These questions and more swam through her head, making her hold her breath as she waited for the bloody thing to move again.

And it did. But as she braced herself for an encounter with an unmoving plastic face...she instead came face to face from the old man from last night. She let out an audible gasp and he did too. 'He's alive!' she thought. Quickly getting to her feet she unlocked the door and opened it as fast as she could. Rose wouldn't let him get away without answering her questions this time.

The door swung open revealing the man who had the same look of shock on his face that he had before, also noticing that he was quickly pocketing whatever he had used to unscrew the cat flap doors. She also noticed that his coat was still dirty, though likely not from the explosion at Henrick's; his hair seemed clean after all. The old man spoke first.

"What're you doing here?" he demanded.

"I live here!" she responded angrily. 'Not even a hello apparently from this man' she thought.

He paused and sighed. "Of course you do" he muttered bitterly, "That's always how it starts."

"I don't know what you're talking about," Rose said, trying to get back on course. "Anyways, I'm only at home because someone blew up my job."

This did not help things. "Well next time I'll just not save you, heaven knows you people are never grateful for it." His ranting was interrupted by beeping in his pocket. The strange man pulled out yet another alien-looking device and looked at it before pocketing it. Looking now past her into the flat he spoke again. "The signal I'm getting is definitely here, that much is clear." he now looked at Rose. "I am sorry Rose, for my outburst. May I come in?" he asked and then smiled in a way that looked completely forced.

'Well that was a change' she thought.

"Yeah, of course. Come on in." she motioned for the man to come on in, which he did.

"WHO IS IT?" her mum yelled as he stepped into the flat.

Rose led him to her mum to explain away the situation.

"It's about last night. He's part of the inquiry. Give us ten minutes." she hated lying to her mum, and that she had so much practice with doing it. But she couldn't tell her the truth now. Not until she fully understood what had happened.

Her mum turned to face the older man and was visibly alarmed at the state of his clothing but quickly put on her infamous Jackie Tyler smile. "She deserves compensation," she said firmly.

"Oh yes, of course, mam." he responded, uncharacteristically charming, "We're talking millions." he gave a little wave to her and left the doorway entrance as quickly as he could, the charmed affectation gone the second he was out of sight.

"Don't mind the mess. Do you want coffee?" Rose said as she entered their small kitchen.

"Hmm" he muttered looking distracted as soon as he entered the living area. "Yes, might as well. Just milk, please." 

She nodded though she doubted he saw it. "So what do I call you then, you never told me your name last night."

"John" he said. Almost too quickly. She doubted that was his actual name but at least now she could think of him as something other than 'that man' so she let it slide.

"Well, John, I'm thinking we should go to the police. Seriously. Both of us."

At this John turned around again from his weird search of the room, looking characteristically annoyed. "I already told you Rose" he happened to glance over at a an award she got from primary school "Rose Tyler, even if you or I went to the police, well, they wouldn't believe us, but even if they did that would only cause more death. And I'm certainly not causing that. Not anymore."

'Okay, that's another red flag.' but she let that go for now. She needed to get what happened sorted.

"Look, I'm not blaming you, even if it was a joke that went wrong. You were just trying to stop it."

"It wasn't a joke" he muttered, continuing his glances around the room.

"I know that," Rose said getting frustrated. Again. "They said on the news they've found a body."

"Chief electrician?" John asked

She nodded. "He was nice. Nice bloke." She finished up his coffee and proceeded to get milk from the fridge.

"I'm sorry," John said. His next thoughts were cut off by another rattling, once again coming from the cat flap.

"What was that? Have you got an animal?" he asked. He heard another clatter, this time closer to the living area sofa, and proceeded towards it

"No," Rose said. She finished up his coffee and turned to get milk from the fridge.

Unbeknownst to her, the plastic arm that she had given Micky had indeed returned to the area; it was also the origin of the signal that 'John' had traced to her flat. Said arm just returned to the flat and laid in wait to take down the being responsible for blowing up their transmitter. And it had found him. So it pounced, flinging itself at the 'elderly human' intending on suffocating their attacker.

"We did have, but now they're just strays. They come in off the estate." Rose came from the kitchen with two mugs of fresh coffee, rolling her eyes at the state of John. 'Bit odd for an old man to play such a childish prank. Maybe he's trying to cheer me up?'

"I told Mickey to chuck that out. You're all the same. Give a man a plastic hand. Oh, John, stop it, it's not funny!"

Finally, he detached the arm from his face, but Rose soon realized that this was no prank, for the arm immediately flew onto her face. She, for the second time in two days, felt her life flash before her eyes. She did not have to wait long for a rescue, however. John leapt into action, grabbing Rose and throwing her onto the couch that was behind them. He quickly pulled out the strange device that he had used to open those double doors in Henrick's and pressed it hard onto the arm. Within that second, Rose felt the arm's grip on her face relax before it fell to her side and was picked up by John.

"So this is the bugger that brought me here," he said, running his device over the arm. "Whatever this Micky did to dispose of this was clearly not enough." John looked to her and saw that Rose's breaths were shakey and short.

" " he began. "The threat to your life has been neutralized. Thank you for the coffee, but now I must depart. Farewell." And without another word, he turned and made his way out the door of her flat. Rose ran outside to catch up with him at the stairs.

"Hold on a minute. You can't just go swanning off," she said indignantly.

John scoffed. "Yes I can. This is me, swanning off. Don't you have a new job to look for?"

"But that arm was moving. It tried to kill me."

"I'm glad you noticed."

"You can't just walk away. That's not fair. You've got to tell me what's going on." she persisted.

"No, , I really don't." At this, the two of them were finally down the stairs. John turned left towards the fields outside the flat, Rose following close behind.

"All right, then. I'll go to the police. I'll tell everyone. You said, if I did that, I'd get people killed. So, your choice. Tell me, or I'll start talking."

"You need to work on your threats. A toddler wouldn't believe you"

"Who are you?" she pushed, ignoring his insult.

"I already told you. I'm John. John Smith."

She laughed. "Oh come on, you're barmy. That's a terrible fake name."

"Brilliant skills of deduction. It's the only name you're getting." he tried walking faster to get rid of her but couldn't manage it. 'Damn this old body.'

"Come on, then. You can tell me. I've seen enough. Are you the police?"

"Ha no, I was just passing through. You could say that I'm not from around here."

"But what have I done wrong? How come those plastic things keep coming after me?"

"Oh, the whole planet revolves around you, does it?. You were an accident, in the wrong place and the wrong time." John sounded like was letting out more than he wanted to.

"It tried to kill me," Rose said angrily.

"It was after me, . Last night, in the shop, I was there, you wandered in, almost ruined my plan. This morning, I detected another signal, this time tracking _me _down. It fixed on you because of me." he said this all very slow like she might not have gotten it otherwise.

"So what you're saying is, the entire world revolves around you?"

"When I'm attempting to stop an alien incursion, yes!" he responded testily.

"Alien incursion, just listen to yourself. You're full of it. Other people would know."

"Nope. Not anything of this scale anyway. This lot is keeping themselves real hidden. Even I'm having difficulty tracking them down."

For the first time, Rose paused in her words. Could he be telling the truth? What John talked about was insane but wasn't she just strangled by a plastic arm? She couldn't write him off. She needed to know more.

"Okay. Start from the beginning. I mean, if we're going to go with the living plastic, and I don't even believe that, but if we do, how did you kill it?"

"There's a relay, somewhere, controlling it; Animates the arm. I cut off the signal permanently, all plastic stays dead."

"So that's radio control?" she tried to piece together what he was saying.

"Close. Kind of. Thought control...you alright?" he asked.

"Yeah. So, who's controlling it, then?"

"A group called the Autons, you've probably never heard of them."

"But what's it all for?" she pressed, "I mean, shop window dummies, what's that about? Are they trying to take over Britain's shops?"

"They want to overthrow the human race and destroy you," he said very flatly. He glanced over at Rose. "But you don't believe, do you?"

"No."

"Yet you're still following me."

"Really, though, John. Tell me, who are you?" At this, the elderly man stopped and turned to her. His arrogant posture slumped and those intense eyes she'd first seen in Henrick's turned soft and sad.

"Do you remember what I said about loss ? Last night outside that shop. I saw in your house...you've known loss kind of loss that doesn't get better, the kind that leaves a hole that you can't replace. The kind that adults lie to kids about when they say that all things heal with time." he laughed bitterly. "I lost a dear friend many years ago, and what's worse, is that it was my fault. I believed at the time that his loss was necessary. And I sauntered away, thinking that the life I would lead could, one day, make up for the hole that he had left. It almost consumed me, turned me into a man that I never wanted to be. And I still feel that pain, swirling inside me, like the turn of the Earth." he came even closer to her and took her hand, "The ground beneath my feet, spinning at a thousand miles an hour, and the entire planet, hurtling round the sun at sixty-seven thousand miles an hour, and I can _always _feel it. And if I let go for just a single second" he let her go. "Then I am lost to it."

He turned around and continued to walk, before pausing once again to speak.

"Forget me, Rose Tyler. Go home. You don't want to get mixed in with an old man's foolish quest for atonement."

Strangely, though this left Rose with even more questions, she could understand broadly what he was trying to say. Not knowing how to respond she let John continue his walk away from her and the fields they were currently in. He was walking in the direction of an old blue police box. Walking back to her flat, still pondering the man's words, she heard very loud wheezing and whoosing sounds behind her. Looking back she saw that both John Smith and the old blue box were gone.


	3. Rose and Grandad III

'What the actual bloody hell?' Rose thought as she looked back once more to see that John and the blue box were both indeed gone. She had hoped to convince John to go with her to the police, or at the very least explain the bizarre things that had happened over the past day and a half, but neither of those goals had been realised. Instead, she stood in Powell Park with mouth agape, not only John-less but with more questions than she had before!

A quick buzz from her jeans interrupted her frustrated musings. 'Hey babe wanna hang?' it was a text from Micky. Annoyed, she almost typed back a rather rude no but then stopped herself. 'If John won't tell me what's going on, maybe the internet can!' she thought excitedly. 'Sure thing babe :*' she typed back before pocketing her cell phone. Micky's internet was way faster than back at her flat. She felt a little bad about kind of using him like this, but this way he got to see her and she got to have her questions answered. Where's the harm in that right?

Mickey's flat was only a minute's walk from hers. She arrived within the half-hour of his text. Entering, Rose was immediately assaulted with the scents of half-done laundry and musty aridness.

"Love," she said, coughing. "Open a window every now and then, will ya."

He rose apologetically. "Of course! Hey, hey there's my woman. Kit off!"

"Shut up!" she said. Micky gave her a peck.

"Coffee?" he asked her.

"Yeah, only if you wash the mug. And I don't mean rinse, I mean wash. Can I use your computer?" she got to her real purpose of coming here.

"Yeah. Any excuse to get in the bedroom. Don't read my emails!" Rose rolled her eyes as she left the living area and entered her boyfriend's room. She held back a gag as she closed the door. The room smelled of an even more pungent odour than the rest of the flat. 'Yeah, he's barmy if he thinks I'm shaggin' in this landfill.'

She logged onto his computer and started her research. She admitted, there wasn't much to go off of, but trying was better than not trying at all. She didn't bother looking up 'John Smith'; there were way too many of those to be successful. First, she tries 'John Smith Living Plastic' which turns up countless results of plastic surgeons with said name. Next, she tries for 'John Smith Blue Box.' This time, nothing but a few eShop results come up. Rose is about to give up when a final thing John said occurred to her. 'Doctor Blue Box' she types. This search garners the fewest results yet, but the top one caught her interest. 'Doctor Who?...do you know this man? Contact Clive here.' She clicked on the link and almost instantly regretted doing so. The main page of the site was a textbook example of a conspiracy website. All over, in uneven placements, were pictures of various men and a few women too. None of them looked like John did. She almost clicked out of the page when her eyes glanced upon one of the smaller pictures in the corner of the site. She clicked on it to enlarge it (it was low high quality) and released a gasp. A man stood in a black leather jacket, like John's, but it was cleaner. The figure's hair was shorter than John's too but...unless the poor quality was fooling her, his face seemed almost identical to John's. 'This must be an old photo of his!' Rose thought excitedly. 'Wait...John said the Doctor had died. Maybe that's a cover identity' she thought.

Giving little thought to the men and women in the other pictures, Rose quickly found the 'Contact Me' tab, clicked it, and dialled the resulting number. She would figure this out. One way or another.

_An Hour Later_

A few kisses and intimate shenanigans later, she had finally convinced Micky to drive her to the address that Clive had given her in their brief phone call. She had tried to explain her situation to him over the phone but he had cut her off rather abruptly. "Go to this address," he had said. "It'll be safer to talk there" he proceeded to hang up. And now she was here, in a small suburb 20 minutes outside of anywhere she'd been in the last 5 years, with an insane story and no proof to back it up. Micky's grumblings brought her back to reality.

"You're not coming in" she restated for the fifth time. "He's safe. He's got a wife and kids."

"Yeah, who told you that? He did. That's exactly what an internet lunatic murderer would say." she did not admit that he had a point. Finally, he stopped the car. "We're here," he said grumpily.

She exited Micky's yellow VW and started towards the house. It looked normal enough Rose thought. She focused herself to not think of any more implications or uses for a lunatic to have a normal house. With more confidence than she felt, she knocked on Clive's door. Who answered it was a man, axe murderer or not, but a small blonde boy.

"Hello," she began awkwardly, "I've come to see Clive? We had a chat on the phone."

Without a greeting, the boy turned toward the inside "Dad! It's one of your nutters!" he yelled.

An overweight, brown-haired man in a green shirt came to the door "Oh, sorry. Hello. You must be Rose. I'm Clive, obviously." he was jovial and shook her hand enthusiastically when she offered it.

"I'd better tell you now. My boyfriend's waiting in the car, just in case you're going to kill me," she responded, half-jokingly.

"No, good point. No murders." Clive waved to Micky, who was sulking in his car. He then gestured her inside. The inside of his house was textbook suburban, with no tablecloths, furniture, or colour palates out of place. She glanced into the kitchen and saw that he also had a young daughter and a wife. Clive had the life that she and her mother had always wanted. So why was he mixed up in something like the Doctor and John Smith? He led her outside of the house and into a medium-sized shed in his backyard.

Entering, it was pitch black. But as soon as Clive turned on the lights she could see that the layout of the website was simply a reflection of what the inside of the shed looked like. Files upon files were strewn about, some of them with pictures half-falling out of them. Clive soon got to work organizing them.

"A lot of this stuff's quite sensitive. I couldn't just send it to you. People might intercept it, if you know what I mean. If you dig deep enough and keep a lively mind, this Doctor keeps cropping up all over the place. Political diaries, conspiracy theories, even ghost stories. No first name, no last name, just the Doctor. Always The Doctor. And the title seems to have been passed down from father to son, mother to daughter. It appears to be an inheritance. That's your Doctor there, isn't it?" he pointed to the picture that had caught her eye on the website.

"I'm not sure," she answered honestly.

"What d'ya mean?"

"Well...he looks somewhat like him, but a lot younger. He has some of the same leather jacket but a lot cleaner. The man I met last night called himself John Smith and told me that he was carrying out his mission in memory of the Doctor. He said he...died. But now, I don't know what to think, Maybe it was a lie, he could certainly be this one." she pointed to the photo again.

"That is very curious, Rose. In all my records, I've never heard of one calling himself John Smith or one that looked like you describe. How much older is this John?"

"He looked about mid-seventies," she answered.

"Hmm….no that wouldn't fit the timeline at all for this guy then," he said discarding the photo. "I tracked that one down to the Washington public archive just last year. The online photo's enhanced, but if we look at the original" he extracted another photo from the file he was holding. The man was a crowd overlooking JFK's motorcade." November 22nd, 1963. The assassination of President Kennedy. You see?"

"It must be his father," Rose said, but she doubted it herself.

He proceeded to show her more pictures and sketches. Some of the figures looked quite like John. Others, especially the few women, looked nothing like him at all.

"The Doctor is a legend woven throughout history. When disaster comes, they're there. Whichever one, doesn't matter….they bring the storm in their wake and they always have one constant companion."

"Who's that?"

"Death." he said simply. "Regardless of if the Doctor's back, if the man you've seen knows of him, and is doing his work...this John Smith...Rose, one thing's for certain. We're all in danger. If he's singled you out, if he's making house calls, then God help you."

"But who are they? What does being 'the Doctor' mean? Who do you think John Smith is?"

"I think the Doctors are the same person. I think they're immortal. Changing, but immortal. I think they're aliens from another world. As for John Smith, he may be the Doctor, Rose. Or he may be from the same world as the Doctor. Either way...you've got to keep a lookout, Rose."

After shakily smiling and thanking Clive for his time, Rose exited the shed as fast as she could, went through his house, and returned back to Micky's awful yellow car. She couldn't remember the last time she had been this stressed out. At Henrik's when she was cornered by those plastic men? Maybe, but this was still different. This feeling was of dread, uncertainty; it was a feeling that she couldn't shake off as far-fetched and unreasonable. She had seen John do impossible things, say impossible things all with the straight-facedness of someone who did this every day of their life. She had always wanted a little bit more to life than shop work, but this?

As she sat down in Micky's beetle she slammed the door a little hard.

"You were right, he's a nutter. Off his head. Complete online conspiracy freak. You win! What are we going to do tonight? I fancy a pizza." She didn't believe any of this. She hoped saying so would make it true. Right about now she wished nothing more that she had listened to Micky and 'kited off' instead of coming here.

"Pizza! P-p-p-pizza!"

"Or Chinese," she said, hoping that he wasn't mocking her appetite.

"Pizza!" he exclaimed weirdly, before driving off way more aggressively than normal.

'Oh don't you start acting weird too, babe' she thought. He was probably just hungry, Rose figured. She had been in Clive's shed for a fair bit. 'Right now better be rock bottom' the young blonde concluded. 'This couldn't get any worse.'

**AN: Hello, readers! My largest and sincerest apologies for the delay in this update. I want to get out of the 'Rose' episode as much as the next person but university has been absolutely kicking my rear these past weeks. I try to make these as interesting, coherent, and lore-friendly (save the AU elements) that I can. I love hearing feedback in the reviews, so if you have anything to say like praise, suggestions, polite criticism, I want to hear it. Thanks for reading and I'll see y'all again next week! (Hopefully)**


	4. Rose and Grandad IV

Mickey was uncharacteristically silent as he drove them to Florean's Pizza. Normally Rose would've been grateful for the change, but the cloud of loneliness that it set upon her was suffocating. Maybe he thought she needed space? She doubted that any small talk could have helped her out of her cloud of worry now though. Besides, her boyfriend wasn't great emotional support at the best of times; the blonde cracked open her window and stared out at the Cardiff landscape in front of her. She was the epitome of a contradicting emotional nineteen year old. One part of her wanted nothing more than to forget everything that had happened to her since Hendrik's, to pretend and never look back. Another part screamed that this was the most exciting her life had ever been in Cardiff, and John Smith, his mystery was a difficult one - it begged continued investigation. She sat the entire 15 minute car ride to the pizza shop arguing with herself. Whatever side Rose sided with, she expected there to be a whole lot of running involved.

_The Pizza Restaurant_

'Trying to pretend' had won her internal battle, at least for now. As soon as Rose and Mickey got seated at their favourite pizzaria, she tried talking to him about new jobs she could try picking up; her boyfriend usually had his ear to the ground on what odd jobs needed doing around town. But he was being, as usual, more aggravating than helpful. Maybe he could sense that she was anxious and didn't want to make her angry? It would explain why he was shiny with so much sweat. Still she talked on - it was the only thing she could do.

"Do you think I should try the hospital? Suki said they had jobs going in the canteen. Is that it then, dishing out chips?" Just saying it made her soul tense up. "I could do A Levels," she continued, "I don't know. It's all Jimmy Stone's fault. I only left school because of him. Look where he ended up. What do you think?"

At this point she'd take anything from him.

"So, where did you meet this Doctor?"

Except that.

"I'm sorry, wasn't I talking about me for a second?" Mickey hasn't been the most tactful boyfriend but this was something else.

"Because I reckon it started back at the shop, am I right? Was he something to do with that?"

"No," she answered back shortly. He never pestered her like this, it was like dating Jimmy Stone all over again. She swore if John caused her to break up with-

"Come on."

"Sort of," she caved.

"What was he doing there?"

"I'm not going on about it, Mickey. Really, I'm not, because, I know it sounds daft, but I don't think it's safe. I think he's dangerous."

"But you can trust me, sweetheart. Babe, sugar, babe, sugar. You can tell me anything. Tell me about the Doctor and what he's planning, and I can help you, Rose. Because that's all I really want to do, sweetheart, babe, babe, sugar, sweetheart." he took her hands as he said this and she grew fearful. His grip was strong but rubbery, and as he spoke his head spasmed and his voice shifted radically in pitch between words. Had the whole world gone crazy?! First her job, then John, and now her boyfriend?

"Mickey, you're hurting me" Rose could not hide the panic and hurt in her voice. She would scream if he didn't let go.

Mickey only smiled at her anguish. Then...many things happened at once.

From seemingly out of nowhere, John Smith had appeared behind Mickey with a bottle of champagne in hand and, with the dexterity and strength of a cinema action hero, smashed the bottle against the back of his neck, jabbed the cylindrical device she'd seen before at Mickey's neck, turned it on, and pulled off his head.

She screamed.

Before she could get up and murder the man for killing her boyfriend, more things kept happening.

Instead of hitting the floor, Mickey's decapitated body stood up. His rubbery palmed hands then turned into large slabs; they slammed down on the glass table in front of them and broke it clean in half. As the entire restaurant went into chaos, it suddenly clicked.

'Oh...a plastic monster. Then...what happened to the real Mickey.?' Before she could process this new and, embarrassingly obvious, revelation she felt a pull from behind her. John placed himself between her and the fake Mickey and then with a marksman's speed, whipped out his space gun and fired it at the plastic imposter. But unlike last time with the mannequin, fake Mickey did not slow his walk towards them.

"Dammit," he said, "I always hate the new software update. Run!" he took her hand and they were out the back exit of the pizzeria.

_An Alley_

They exited onto a graffitied alleyway that showed no sign of a possible exit, solely an old police telephone callbox and a padlocked gate. Turning around, John cradled fake Mickey's head in his left arm and appeared to be locking the pizzeria door with his strange tool with his right. She ran to the gate, expecting him to be right behind her. Instead she turned to see him walking slowly towards the callbox.

"Open the gate! Use that tube thing. Come on!" she gestured to it.

"Sonic screwdriver" he said lazily, not breaking his walk.

"Then use it!" At this he stopped and finally looked directly at her.

"Miss Rose, I am not an idiot. I can promise that I can make sense of all of this for you...if you would please close your mouth for five minutes and follow me into this box." he pointed to it with his free arm. There was then a large bang coming from the pizzeria.

'Fuck it, at least I won't be outside' she thought as she made her way behind him and entered into the callbox. It was nothing like she had expected it to be.

Instead of an enclosed space with a telephone was a large circular room. It was an earthy space, but was definitely technological too. Round light fixture things adorned the walls and in the middle was what looked to be a cylindrical control mechanism for whatever she was in. This box ran contrary to everything she knew to be possible. But if the past few major events of her life were any indication, it seemed that such surprises may only be the beginning. She had a million questions; she chose to ask the most pressing one.

"Can it get in here?"

"Not a chance" he said from the control console in the middle of the room. He was pushing buttons and pulling levers and hooking up wires to the fake Mickey's head. "The assembled hordes of Ghengis Khan, the Faro Klan of Skaro, the Vardic, none could get past the doors if they wanted to, and believe me they've tried."

John continued meddling with the head. "You see, the arm was too simple, but the head's perfect. I can use it to trace the signal back to the original source." He looked back at her and stopped his explanation and sighed. "Where do you want to start?"

"Er, the inside is bigger than the outside?" Probably a stupid question.

"Naturally." _Definitely_ a stupid question.

"It's alien."

"Yes."

"And you...you're alien too?"

He smirked. "Keenly observed. That alright?"

She paused. He was scary. He was unknown. He could kill in a blink if he wanted and, judging by the troubled legacy of his associate, he likely had...but he had also saved her life. Three times. Without want for anything. "Yes."

"What we are standing in is my TARDIS. Stands for Time and Relative Dimensions in Space."

She burst into tears. Here she was standing about in a spaceship and her boyfriend might be dead. Did they kill him to make the fake one? Is he still alive? How could she be enjoying the adrenaline of any of this when he might need her. Rose felt like a terrible girlfriend.

John cleared his throat nervously and made his way toward her. "Ahh culture shock. Happens to the best of us."

"Did they kill him? Mickey. Is he dead?"

The older man looked back at the plastic head on his console and then back at her with an unimpressed expression. "Oh him? I have to admit I wasn't thinking about that."

"He's my boyfriend! You whacked him with a bottle and shot him and you didn't even think?!"

"Miss Rose answer me this!" he snapped back. "How the hell would they've been able to maintain the murderous plastic doppelganger if they kicked his bucket?"

It was Rose's turn to pause and think. "Well I suppose I didn't think...:"

"Exactly!"

"But you said-"

"I said that I wasn't thinking about him at the time, not that I didn't know what could've happened to him." He sighed, lost the edge in his voice, and crumpled to the seat nearest the console. "I don't remember this being so hard" he said tiredly before looking again to Rose.

"As I said, the head can lead me to the source of all of this. If your boyfriend is alive, which I highly wager he is, he will be safe once I put an end to their schemes once and for all."

Rose was grateful for the change in tone. It wasn't quite an apology, but she would take his promise to save him if he could. "Thank you."

He nodded in acknowledgement. There was a pregnant pause.

"So how does melting it down help you find them?" the blonde finally asked.

"Melt?" John's elderly face scrunched in confusion before returning its gaze to the head on his console, which was quickly steaming and dripping onto the floor with quite pitter-patter hisses. He bolted out of his chair as confusion turned to panic.

"No! No, no, no, no, no!" he rushed over to his console and started fiddling with the buttons and levers that surrounded the increasingly small plastic head. As he did so the ground became increasingly replete with shaking

Rose ran towards the console. "What are you doing? What's happening?"

"They caught onto what I was doing while we were chatting, triggered the suicide defence."

The box lurched violently and the two nearly lost their grips on the console.

"Oh for heaven's sake! Too much of the head is gone. I can only just pin down a proximate location to the source!"

John pulled a lever and the box's shaking stopped. He ran towards the door.

"Wait, you can't go out there! it's not safe!" The young woman followed after him.

But she was wrong. Instead of coming back out to the unremarkable alleyway Rose found herself greeted by the unmistakable sight of the River Thames. Quickly looking around herself she found she and John were right next to the RAF monument.

"I lost the signal," John said quietly. "I was so _so _close." he banged his right hand on the railing in front of him.

Rose however, still was having trouble grasping their change of scenery.

"We've moved. Does it fly?"

"Were you paying attention?" he did not shift his gaze from the Thames. "Time and Relative _Dimensions _in Space. We disappeared there and reappeared here. You wouldn't understand"

"If we're somewhere else, what about that headless thing? It's still on the loose."

At this John whipped around frustratingly.

"Now? You want to do this now?" he pinched the bridge of his nose as if willing himself to continue talking to her. "The body...melted...with the head" he explained as if talking to an idiot. "But please do witter on while I try to look for _your _boyfriend, Miss Rose."

She laughed in anger and disbelief, "You really don't get this is new to me do you? Do you have any idea what I've gone through in the past few days? How crazy any of this is for me?"

"If I'm a little frustrated explaining this to a kid-"

"I'm nineteen!"

"Then it's only because I'm preoccupied trying to save the life of every stupid ape stumbling about on this stupid rock, all right?" he fired back.

"All right!"

There was once again a pregnant pause. John finally nodded and turned himself back towards facing the Thames. Rose joined him

"I apologise." he finally said. "I haven't been around humans for, well for ages at this point. It's only natural that you would have questions. I'm not as good as-"

"The Doctor?" she said, wanting to gauge his reaction.

His words stopped cold and he looked at her with widened eyes.

"I was curious about ya. So I did some research. You didn't give me much, but I think I found the Doctor you mentioned you were doing this for. Found a lot of references, especially in the 1970s. Old friend, family of yours, right?"

To her surprise, instead of more biting comments or anger, John smirked and then smiled sadly before returning his attention to the view in front of him.

"You surprise me, Miss Rose. But, yes. I suppose, in a sense, that the Doctor and I shared quite a connection for a time. In the end, though, he was better at this than I'll ever be."

"Don't say that. _You_ saved me. Not the Doctor."

"Your words are kind. More kind than I deserve."

"Don't mention it."

The two gazed out over the Thames for a while.

"I want to help." Rose finally spoke. Her companion looked to her confused and about to protest.

"Save it. This's kept following me, John. My work got blown up, an arm followed my home, my boyfriend got kidnapped. I want to see this through. Besides, you could use the help. All right?"

The man finally nodded. "All right. You've convinced me. In the meantime, I need to think of a way we can close in on their base of operations. It might take a while."

"Okay…in the meantime," she began hesitantly. "Can I ask a few more questions. Just so I better understand you and what we're up against."

He sighed and moved himself onto a nearby bench, clearly thinking over the request before giving a small smirk. "Okay, Miss Rose. But time is of the essence. You only get five questions. Choose wisely."

'That cheeky old bastard' she thought. But Rose liked challenges. They helped her prioritise. So she sat down next to him confidently and asked.

"If you're an alien, how are we understanding each other?"

"Huh, most people don't start with that one. The TARDIS projects a translation field for the convenience of myself and whatever species I interact with. Haven't come across a language yet she can't translate."

His mentioning of his ship brought to her mind another question and she asked it before she could stop herself.

"What's a police public call box?"

"Really? It's a telephone box from the 1950s. I use the appearance of one as a disguise. You've got three questions left; I hope some are relevant to our predicament." he said amusingly.

"Okay. This, this living plastic then. What's it got against us?"

"Oh against humans?" John barked back laughter. "Nothing. Loves the lot of you. All the oil, smokes, toxins and dioxins that you funnel off into the atmosphere - the Nestene Consciousness needs it all, desperately. Its food stock was destroyed in a recent war. Think of Earth as the perfect buffet."

"Any way of stopping it?"

"A few come to mind. The most accessible to me is this." he pulled out a blue vial from one of his jacket pockets. "Anti-plastic. But in order to even use the damn thing I've got to find them."

He arose from the bench in vexation. "How can you hide something that big in a city this small?"

"Hold on," Rose said, following him. "Hide what?"

"The transmitter. The Consciousness controls every single piece of plastic, so it needs a transmitter to boost their natural signal."

"What's it look like?"

"That's a sixth question, but I'll allow it. Looks like any transmitter does in this era. Round and massive, squatting in the middle of London town. Likely a dish or a wheel, radial. Close to where we're standing. Must be completely invisible, has to be."

Rose was incredulous. Behind both of them was the London Eye, and John hadn't noticed all this time? Perhaps his eyesight was going.

"So like that wheel, the London Eye."

John turned "Shit!" he exclaimed. He brought his hand up to his forehead in disbelief before turning around and shaking his head "I must be losing my edge. Good eye!"

"That's what I'm here for" Rose said amused. She reached out her hand towards him. "I can get us there. Shall we, Mr. Smith?"

He was sporting the largest grin she had seen on the man.

"Miss Rose, we shall!"

He took her hand and they were both off together.


End file.
